Thanks MrHijet. I had plans to get some L600 struts a little later on as I've heard that they're slightly shorter than the standard struts. Having a bit of negative camber is probably a good thing in my case as well, since I'll need to camber the front end in a little to get the 13's to fit nicely.

Here's some more recent pictures now that I've finished moving house and have had a little time to do some work.

Only things that I'm still waiting on are tyres, which wouldn't normally be an issue, except the range of tyres available in Australia for kei cars is a little limited. Ideally, I'm chasing a set of 145/65R13, as it's the smallest and narrowest tyre available. (In case people are wondering why, it's so they clear the rear guards)

155/65R13 may have to suffice if I get completely stuck, but the rolling diameter is a little too big for my liking compared to the standard 145/70R12.

Nothing much new to report. I pumped out the rear guard a couple of millimetres so the tyres don't rub on compression. This should hopefully have a roadworthy and rego by weeks end if all goes to plan.

Looking at some different wheels for later on as well. If I get some, they should make this look 10 times cooler. (Well, they do in my mind)

This car has probably got to be one of the most fun cars I've driven. I've never even driven anything high powered and I'd probably still say it's more fun. Every time I get out of it, there's a big cheesy grin across my face.

I think it's something about the novelty of driving a tiny car, even if it is slow as all hell when driving against other cars, haha. I almost feel sorry for the majority of the US that you guys never got much/anything kei-car sized.

Getting back to the real talk now though, there's a few things I want to do over the next few days. This includes:

I know where you're coming from with the smiling business There are lots of these driving round here and they're cheap as dirt. Going by the name Cuore.
Considered one as my daily, might later on.
Nice going with the original choice of car

They're a great little runabout car as they chew bugger all fuel even if you're giving it a good thrashing, which you usually are to get up hills, haha. I'm waiting until I have to fill it up again to get an idea on the exact fuel consumption, but I'm currently sitting on about 190km and the needle is just under half, which is roughly 10 litres used, give or take a couple of litres. A rough calculation of 11L/190km gives about 5.7L/100km.

In other news, I went out and bought a bunch of stuff to give this a service, as I don't actually know when it was last given one. So far I've replaced the fuel and oil filters and put some fresh 20w-50 (nothing special, just some cheap-ish, but not crap stuff). I've got a new thermostat on order which should be in later this week. When that arrives I'll be dumping all the coolant out, replacing the radiator with the spare, putting the new thermostat in and topping it off with some new coolant.

Well, all my servicing looks to be done, aside from replacing the coolant once I flush out what's in there still and changing over the heater core if I can be bothered.

I realised after driving around for a few days that the timing was set to full retard, which explained a little about why it didn't drive all that well and was hesitant. I wound in some advance and swapped over the dizzy cap for one of the spares I had. Consequently, with the timing advanced a bit, it idled higher, so I've wound down the idle to a nice, steady rate and backed off the fuel accel pump.

Hopefully, this should all contribute to an even better fuel economy. The first tank got about 7.8L/100km, which isn't too bad, but not that great either, for such a small motor. We'll see how much better the next tank does to properly gauge how the adjustments went.

hi, im im new zealand and have a 1987 2 door, tr-xx turbo that im trying to get on the road im finding it hard to get some wheels in the 4x110 stud pattern, i was thinking about maybe re drilling or using differnt hubs to get 4x100? any ideas,

i need a five speed box also as the one i have now is past its best, hard to find though.

hi, im im new zealand and have a 1987 2 door, tr-xx turbo that im trying to get on the road im finding it hard to get some wheels in the 4x110 stud pattern, i was thinking about maybe re drilling or using differnt hubs to get 4x100? any ideas,

i need a five speed box also as the one i have now is past its best, hard to find though.

your handi looks sweet.

Easiest way to swap to 100PCD is to swap the hubs over for L700 gear. Otherwise, have a look into wheels to suit earlier Mazda RXs, since a lot of them ran 110PCD. Keep in mind that you don't need a whole lot of width/offset to fill out the guards on these, which means you can pretty much run any standard wheel, so long as you have the centre bores machined out to suit the Daihatsu hubs.

The steelies I've got were off an RX-_, though I'm not entirely sure which. I've got another set of wheels making their way over from Japan in the next couple of months hopefully. Should be sweet as.